Why Epic?

Epic is the preferred electronic medical
record system used by more than 250 health
care organizations nationwide. To date, 45
percent of the US population have their
medical records in an Epic system.
View more information about Epic Software
Suite.

Integrated Electronic
Medical Record

Our organizations have reached an inflection
point with respect to the enterprise EMR
complexity. Within NYP and the two
universities, there are ten EMR instances.
We are moving towards an integrated EMR and
giving end users the tools necessary to
deliver high quality care connected to a
single patient health record.

The scale of this project is immense, but
presents a tremendous opportunity to
streamline and standardize care across the
entire health system based on best practices
in all possible areas. There are real and
obvious advantages to an integrated system
in terms of continuity and quality of care,
by sharing information, avoiding duplication
of investigations, and enhancing
communication among providers and also
between provider and patient.

Epic – tripartite update for faculty and staff

In late 2017, we announced that Columbia, Weill Cornell Medicine, and NewYork-Presbyterian signed a joint contract with Epic to create a single electronic health record across our three institutions. We want to provide a brief update on what has been accomplished so far and what we have yet to do before we “go live” in January 2020.

Over the past 12 months, more than 2,500 people from across our three organizations – including more than 200 staff who have been hired specifically for the Epic project – have been working together to make hundreds of key decisions that will guide the planning and development of the system. In addition, hundreds of physicians across 52 different Clinical Leadership Groups have been working to align our practices and processes across the three organizations, so that we could develop standardized clinical workflows in the new system.

The teamwork and professionalism we have seen throughout this phase of the project has been remarkable. Faculty and staff representing every clinical area, and nearly every administrative function, have devoted thousands of hours of effort in addition to their already busy work demands.

All of this effort has led to the current phase of the project, the build phase. The EpicTogether team is currently building our Epic system to our specifications, integrating all of the decisions you’ve made about how we want the system to work for our clinicians.

In 2019, our focus will shift dramatically as we move from building the system to training everyone who will be using it. This is a massive undertaking, and you will be hearing a great deal about it in the months ahead. We will also be installing and conducting extensive testing of the computers and other infrastructure that will be used to deploy Epic across the three organizations.

We are on track to launch one of the most advanced and up-to-date electronic health record systems in the world. We want to express our deepest gratitude for everything you’ve done and continue to do to make this project successful.